Saturday, July 24, 2010

What worked?• The top bowl had the perfect spout shapes on the sides from which to pour into the other bowls. • Placing a long foot on the bottom of the bowls, rather than trying to come up from the bottom of the next lower bowl proved useful for glazing purposes.• The straight up-and-down design with the continuous line from feet to bowl provided easy placement of the tubing for least exposure.

What didn’t • I didn’t think hard enough about where the pump would be going—hence the huge pile of rocks in the bottom bowl to cover it up. I’m not sure that the river rocks completely match the style, carving, and coloring of the bowls. Next time, I would have either made the foot of the bowl above large enough to accommodate the pump, or made and glazed smaller stylized pieces of clay to replace the river rocks.• The middle bowl does not have any clear channel for the water in which to run, so it tends to pour and splatter from everywhere. Next time, I would try to design it with definite spouts on the edges.• I would have liked the bottom bowl to be larger. This would give more space to hold water in the bottom, and might look a little more balanced. In order to give the fountain enough water to supply all of the bowls, more water must be added as soon as it is turned on and the original water is sucked up the tube.

Gourd Fountain

What worked?• The simplistic design and minimal components of this fountain made it much easier to put together and much less fuss to work with.• The glaze coloring (a green celadon) and the rounded form work well with the smooth river rocks.• When I created the top component, I left a large hole in the bottom. This hole allows quick and easy access to the pump and the tubing. The form just sits slightly on top of the pump itself, supported by the river rocks.

What didn’t• The hole around the top of the gourd was very difficult to position with rocks in such a way that they didn’t fall down the tubing, or simply through the form. I finally worked through this problem by gluing some larger rocks around the tube, and then gluing smaller ones on top of it. It was especially difficult to make the rocks work because I couldn’t immediately test how they affected the flow without destroying my glue job.• The thick black cord seems disproportionate with the rest of the fountain. In the future, I would look around more to find a pump with a two-prong cord instead of this massive three-prong one.

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